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View Full Version : Did war compromise al-Qaida hunt?



Sgt Sostand
07-30-03, 10:05 AM
Clear tradeoff’
while pursuing
regime change in Iraq

July 29 — In early 2002, the U.S. campaign against al-Qaida — “Operation Enduring Freedom” — was revving high. U.S. commandos readied themselves for lightning strikes in the dusty plains of Afghanistan or the deserts of Yemen; aerial drones buzzed the skies rigged with cameras and missiles, controlled by technicians on the ground; surveillance planes high overhead listened for electronic whispers of Taliban holdouts.

BUT, AS “Operation Enduring Freedom” kept al-Qaida on the run, the White House was already planning for war against Iraq. Sources say that in the spring of 2002, key weapons in the war against terror — such as the commandos, the drones and the high-tech surveillance planes — were rotated out of Afghanistan. Now experts tell NBC there was a clear tradeoff as the United States let up on al-Qaida to pursue regime change in Iraq.
A former national security official in the Bush administration tells NBC News Senior Investigative Correspondent Lisa Myers the White House was warned that the buildup against Saddam might provide a respite for Osama bin Laden and his henchmen. “There were decisions made,” says Flynt Leverett, a former director at the National Security Council in the Bush White House, “to take key assets, human assets, technical assets, out of theater in Afghanistan in order to position them for the campaign to unseat Saddam.”
Leverett, a former senior CIA analyst, talks with the professorial precision of an academic. “We see today,” he says, “that al-Qaida has been able to reconstitute leadership cells in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region and it would seem in Eastern Iran.”